Fern
by seht
Summary: When Dorothy was a little girl, she was not shy. She was not quiet. She was not nervous.


**A/N: I wrote this at school a few weeks ago, during one of those long, boring periods after exams are finished. No real warnings, except for a dash of mediocrity and maybe a little bit of sappiness towards the end.**

**Generic disclaimer: I don't own anything, and I don't really care to.**

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When Dorothy was a little girl, she was not shy. She was not quiet. She was not nervous.

She had had bright eyes and messy bangs and perpetually scabby knees. She climbed trees and went fishing and made mud pies and _lived._

She was also going to have a baby brother or sister, according to her parents. Dorothy didn't mind – she was _excited_. Babies meant cute clothes and gurgly laughs and unconditional love. Besides, it made her mother happy – and when her mother was happy, everyone was happy.

The pregnancy flew by without a hitch – there were no unusual complications, and Dorothy's mother grew happier and, according to Gordon, more beautiful each day. Every week, Dorothy would escort her mother to Natalie's office for an exam, and Dorothy would get to go upstairs and play with Ray. Dorothy liked Ray – he sat still and let her weave flowers in his hair, and always shared his snacks with her.

The baby was born in the midst of summer's heat. Dorothy sat outside on the church's front steps, drinking lemonade and wiping sweaty hands on the doormat, and tried her hardest to ignore her mother's anguished screams. It didn't work very well, but Dorothy was good at pretending. She made believe that her mother had been captured by a ferocious dragon, and that her father was fighting for her with tooth and nail.

Finally, Gordon came outside, having gained a few more wrinkles on his forehead. He took Dorothy upstairs to see her mother, explaining that _Mommy isn't feeling good right now, dear heart, so you have to be gentle, _and that _there's a baby girl in there with Mommy, and we have to be very careful not to hurt it or make it upset, okay?_

Dorothy's mother lay on the bed, red-faced and sweaty, while Natalie was tending to a tiny, raw looking little thing. Dorothy ignored the baby in favor of her mother, who, as Gordon had said, was not looking very good. She looked weak and tired and _awful, _and gave a helpless little cough every few seconds. Dorothy walked over and took her hand, and received a small smile in return. Dorothy couldn't help but think that the smile didn't look quite right, and that maybe there was something wrong…

The baby was named Camilla, after the pretty pink camellia flowers that traveling merchants sometimes brought on their way through Alvarna. (Dorothy rather thought that it was a distasteful name; she'd have picked something more along the lines of "Eloise.")

Her mother was still not getting much better – she remained in bed for weeks after the baby was born, long after the time that Natalie had predicted. Her bedroom stayed dark and cool, the silence punctuated only by her hacking coughs. Moira, Douglas's wife, had been taking care of Cammy (Gordon had agreed to compromise with Dorothy on her name), but Gordon was worried that the baby would grow to confuse Moira with her mother.

One evening, Dorothy woke to find a light on downstairs, complete with hushed whispers drifting around like rustling leaves. The mood was somber, and Dorothy stood still at the top of the stairs, chills running down her spine to the ends of her bare toes.

It was difficult to hear, but Dorothy was able to make out a few words - "_sorry,""shame", "nothing we could do." _They scared her for some reason, the chills escalating into an uncontrollable tremble. She stumbled back into bed, and woke up to her father rubbing her back, tears on his face. Her mother was dead.

The funeral was a brief, solemn affair. Gordon was able to say a few words, but not many, and so the funeral ended rather abruptly. Dorothy got the feeling that the villagers were anxious to leave, and although she was angry, she couldn't say that she blamed them. The atmosphere of the church was so morbid that even she was glad to escape to the crisp, cool air outside, even if the wind blew straight through her thin cotton dress, cold and damp from the previous day's rain.

The rest of the fall passed with little incident. The crops were good, the weather was decent, Cammy was healthy.

When winter came, however, Dorothy began to develop a cough. Natalie told her father that it was probably just a case of the sniffles, as was common during this season, but there was always a hint of worry in their voices whenever they discussed it. Dorothy stayed in bed for several days, and was exempt from her lessons.

She could hardly speak without collapsing into another fit of coughing, and a peek in the mirror revealed that she was growing paler, weaker, smaller. Worried, hushed whispers lingered on the other side of her closed door, and one night it was so unbearable that she was reduced to tears. The coughs were coming so often and so violently that her throat felt like it was being shredded to pieces. She could hardly raise her head from her pillow, but nevertheless she stood on shaky legs and shuffled over to the mirror.

What she saw there was enough to make her collapse to her knees, her frail body wracked with sobs. She was a colorless, lifeless _ghost_, complete with dark-ringed eyes and cracked, dry lips. She looked like her _mother_.

The coughs returned again after a few moments of crying, and this time they were more agonizing than usual. It felt like her throat was ripping itself from her body, and she was suddenly on _fire_, her shaky movements laced with cold sweat. She fell completely to the floor, pressing her forehead against the cool floor, and clawed at the wood as if it offered some hope of escape. The coughs subsided for a few moments, and she opened her eyes, feeling as if she wouldn't have the strength to move a muscle in her body.

But then she saw the thick, bloody mucus splattered on the floor next to her, and her scream was loud enough to wake even the mayor next door.

Gordon carried her over to the doctor's as quickly as he could manage, ignoring the sting of cobblestones on bare feet. Natalie hovered over her worriedly even while she was waving Gordon away, candlelight casting wobbly shadows on the walls.

Unhappy weeks were spent in Natalie's infirmary, lined with sterile bedsheets and bitter medicines. Dorothy took her medicine and ate the bland food as she was told, but that didn't keep her from fading into her bed, a shadow of a girl.

Dorothy honestly felt that she could endure the symptoms. They weren't pleasant, to be sure, but what really made her miserable, made her withdraw so far into herself that she barely spoke was the way that everyone looked at her like she was already dead. The way they talked _around_ her, not just _to_ her. It was like they had already given up on her, like they had bought her coffin and her cemetery plot and were just waiting for her to fall in so they could nail it shut.

It made her doubt her ability to survive.

So whenever Dorothy had visitors, there was death hanging in the air between them. She could feel it in the way that they spoke, in the way that they glanced knowingly at Natalie whenever they spoke of her recovery. Dorothy honestly _could not_ bring herself to speak to them. Terror was pinning her words back in her throat, and instead she hid her eyes behind shaggy bangs, her face flushed a deep red.

Two people did offer her respite from this unique form of torture, however – Rosalind and Julia. The two girls remained bright eyed and charming even while Dorothy seemed to be on her deathbed, and came in each morning to brush and braid her limp hair, all the while chattering about fashion and dolls and various other mercifully mind-numbing things. Dorothy occasionally offered her opinion in a raspy, dry voice, to which Rosalind and Julia delighted even though it was almost always accompanied by a rather violent fit of coughing.

One morning, though, Byron and Barrett came in to the clinic to pay Dorothy a visit. Dorothy vaguely remembered a visit from Byron in the earlier days of her sickness, but had had almost no contact with Barrett at all. She recalled a few occasions in which she had wordlessly shared a fishing spot with him when she was younger, but otherwise he was essentially a stranger.

Dorothy eyed them from behind a curtain of hair, her hands clutching the bedding in an almost defensive manner.

"Good morning, Dorothy," Byron said in a forcedly cheery voice, nudging Barrett until he did the same.

Dorothy remained still, observing the two of them with red eyes.

"Er, we've heard that you're doing a bit better! That's excellent news."

Still no response. Dorothy could tell that it was irking Byron a bit, and derived a twisted sort of pleasure from the fact.

"We actually came here to, ah, bring you a present of sorts. Barrett …?"

Barrett produced a well-loved stuffed puppy from his school bag, and placed it on the bed beside her hesitantly. "Her name's Fern," he muttered sulkily.

"This was Barrett's when he was younger, when he had scarlet fever," Byron elaborated, ruffling Barrett's hair.

Dorothy considered the doll, with its floppy, worn ears and the frayed velvet ribbon around its neck. She was tempted to ignore it, but then … the eyes. Warm and brown; never mind the fact that they were buttons. They were _hopeful_. They seemed to say, _"Don't worry, dear heart. Everything will be fine, I promise. We'll make it through together."_

Dorothy's hands shot out almost of their own accord and clutched the doll to her chest, running its ears through her fingers. "Hello, Fern," she murmured, the corners of her lips turning upwards for the first time in weeks.


End file.
